


The Sleeping Guard

by mattthedungeonbat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Indian Potter Family (Harry Potter), Master of Death Harry Potter, Necromancer Harry Potter, Nonbinary Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27445669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattthedungeonbat/pseuds/mattthedungeonbat
Summary: Hari has been having dreams of a tall figure in black for as long as she can remember, although surprisingly his skeletal face brings her no fear. He is a companion, almost, available for Hari whenever she is asleep. So why, when she departs for a strange new world, does he not leave her? Why does he not seem surprised? Why, most importantly, does he seem to have planned for this all along, and should Hari play along with his quest?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	1. Prologue

It was a cold night in October as a tall figure looked down upon the burning remains of a house. The cold did not bother this figure, wreathed only in a black cloak, but the fire did. In truth, many houses were burning this night, filling the sky with ash. The ash also did not personally bother the dark figure, but it’s meaning did. He watched as a small figure stole into the burning house, and heard a faint wail of grief. Then the figure left, and some time later another arrived, and bore with him from the house a tiny bundle of blankets.  
Ah. Good. The dark figure and his compatriots had lulled many a soul to sleep on this cold October night, but he had hoped not to have to lull this one. It was an interesting soul, and so young besides. He would rather see it grow and live before he lulled it to sleep once more. The dark figure watched as the tiny bundle was taken away into the night sky, and he hoped that it would be safe wherever it was going. He probably shouldn’t visit it. Probably. He definitely wasn’t going to, he told himself. It was just another soul. Don’t be silly.  
Still, he stayed to watch the tiny soul disappear into the dark before returning home to his own realm, full of the sleeping he had harvested that night. It would be a while before the soul was old enough to speak to him in any case. He could wait.


	2. Blue Sun at Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari goes to the zoo and meets a snek

Harinder Jasmine Potter slept fitfully in her cupboard under the stairs. She was having a dream, you see, which was moderately distressing. In the dream, she stood in the sky above a burning house. Smoke rose from many spots on the horizon, staining the night sky black with soot. It was not hard to tell that she was in England, but she did not recognize the area below her. She wondered what could possibly be burning that was so plentiful and widespread. In an area like this, the only thing she could think of was houses.

“Look,” said a voice, and Harinder jumped in surprise. A figure wreathed in black stood in the sky on her left. It was tall-- even compared to the rather short Harinder, it was abnormally towering. It pointed far off, past the smoke in the distance to the east where the sun was beginning to rise, and its white bone fingers glowed in the low light. Harinder watched as the sun rose above the horizon, and was shocked to find it blue.

“It’s the smoke,” Said the figure matter-of-factly, tucking its arm away inside its robes. Harinder wondered if its bones got cold. “We’ll have red skies all day today.”

“Who are you?” Asked Harinder, looking up towards the figure’s face. Was it Death? Death was the only cloaked skeletal figure she knew of, but perhaps that was a depiction more of a species and less of a specific being. It turned its cowl down towards her and Harinder saw a face of white bone, with cheekbones arching beautiful and hollow in the dawn air, before she woke with a start.

She huffed out a breath, sitting up on her cot and blinking to clear the last blindness of sleep from her eyes. Despite the abruptness of her waking, Harinder did not find herself afeared of the skeletal figure in her dream. Instead she was deeply intrigued. It had not seemed malicious, after all-- it was just showing her the sun.  _ Why? _ She wondered, but she did not know. Perhaps she should visit the library and try to find the last instance of a blue sun in Britain. This decided, she stretched, knocking her knuckles against the undersides of the stairs with her movement, and began attempting to order her day within her mind.

What day was it? She couldn’t be exactly sure. Most of the time Harinder had no idea what day it was, unless it was Sunday, because Sunday was the day her aunt and uncle made clipped remarks about how sinful she and her dead parents were. Harinder didn’t really know anything about her parents other than that her mother had been aunt Petunia’s sister and her father had been “some Paky,” whatever that meant, so she wasn’t terribly offended on their behalves. Perhaps they  _ were _ terribly sinful. But Harinder knew herself not to be especially full of any kind of sin, and so she  _ was _ offended on her  _ own  _ behalf. She supposed she would find out at least if it was Sunday when she was allowed out of her cupboard.

But other than the day of the week, and the vague time of year, Harinder had no idea what the day held in store for her and so she received a very nasty shock when her cousin Dudley suddenly jumped down from the landing unto the stair directly above her head, shouting about how it was his birthday. Harinder’s first thought was that she should have known, followed swiftly by a low, chilling dread that caused cold sweat to break across her arms. She was supposed to cook for Dudley’s birthday, was supposed to have bacon ready and waiting for him when he awoke-- But how could she? The cupboard was locked from the outside, and her aunt Petunia had not come to open it. Had she slept in? It didn’t matter-- whether aunt Petunia was late or not, Harinder would be the one blamed for the lateness.

Sure enough, not a minute later she heard the light and fast steps of her aunt down the stairs before the cupboard door was whipped open and Petunia’s fearsome, scowling face appeared in the doorway. She looked somewhat like a tortoise, wrinkled and papery, her long neck extending into the open space of the doorway in a way Harinder didn’t think human necks should crane. 

“Out!” She bit, and Harinder scrambled out, attempting not to shy away from her aunt in anticipation of the smack which clipped the side of her head as she emerged, for she would get in worse trouble if she flinched, ducked, or blocked. “Get in the kitchen!” Spat Petunia, and Harinder scurried forth to do her aunt’s bidding.

The rest of the day was not horrible. Harinder cooked and only burned herself once on the bacon grease, and then cleaned up the kitchen while her family ate. She snacked on the tiny burnt bits of bacon she had ‘accidentally’ left in the pan-- it wasn’t hard to handle crispy bacon just a  _ bit  _ too roughly, oh no, and pretend to miss the small end bits that fell off into the pan --and eyed her aunt’s plate, which she knew would have the most left over. Aunt Petunia said that Harinder should skip breakfast so that she could stay small and pretty like Petunia, but Harinder didn’t want to be small or pretty so much as she wanted to be able to stop her hands from shaking. She also didn’t think her aunt was especially pretty, but was aware that her uncle obviously did since Dudley existed. Luckily, her aunt did indeed only eat about half of her small plate, so Harinder was able to slip some of the leftovers into her pocket as she scraped the plate into the trash. 

After that, aunt Petunia offered Dudley a birthday outing to the zoo to make up for his lacking presents. Harinder was of the opinion that even one present was plenty, as that would be more than she had ever gotten, but apparently Dudley had extremely different standards than her own. She supposed she shouldn’t complain when in an inevitable fit of flighty attention, he would abandon about half of his gifts to Harinder’s tender mercy throughout the year. Harinder was  _ not  _ excited about her aunt’s choice of the zoo, however. She wasn’t a particular fan of outings that required movement or walking, because those things are rather hard when one is starved and faint. But a small benefit was that in public, Harinder was allowed to have actual food so as not to appear abused, and so at the zoo she was allowed her very own hard, moderately flavorless lemon icy pop and some chips as well.

As she walked around the zoo, lagging somewhat behind her family and her cousin’s friends, Harinder reflected that it was not her favorite place for another reason besides exertion. Something about the enclosures and the glassy stares of the animals always made her feel trapped and cold, as if they stared at her and thought ‘Harinder, how can you leave us here? Do you not see we are trapped? Harinder! Do not walk away!” But walk away inevitably she did. After a while of this disturbing thought pattern, Harinder cast about for something to distract her mind with and settled upon the intriguing figure from her dream. She tried to imagine how tall it had been-- taller than her uncle, who was well built for a man. Her head had only come up to its wrist, which was preferred to coming up to the elbow of most human males. She wouldn’t have to dodge accidental blows to the face if the skeleton walked beside her here. Briefly she thought that it was strikingly odd of her to be thinking fondly on a random giant skeleton from a dream about burning houses, but then returned to her contemplation of the figure as she found it more interesting than social norms. She did her best to remember the exact drape of it’s black cloak, which had seemed to be a very long piece of fabric wrapped about the figure like the Virgin Mary, or some kind of Roman emperor. Or perhaps a monk, she thought, remembering the skeleton’s white bone toes standing on the sky unshod.

This contemplation of Giant Skeleton Fashion was sufficient to take up Harinder’s attention until she realized she had followed her family into the indoor exhibits, and that she was standing in front of a tank with a frog in it. She stared at the green frog, which stared back at her looking quite nonplussed, and then she leaned forward towards the glass to try and see the insides of its enclosure better. It was completely sealed, she realized. Likely the back or front opened, but the frog had no fresh outdoor air, and it could not see the sky. A horrible emotion stabbed through her chest at that realization, for a moment the walls of her cupboard swimming across her vision, and then Harinder shook her head roughly and stepped away from the frog, walking briskly away from it. Her family was down the hall away from her, but every turn of her head revealed more animals trapped in sunless, skyless enclosures until eventually Harinder ceased to move her head at all and simply stared dead ahead, eyes far and unseeing. She stopped by a wall, leaning against the handrail there as she waited distantly for her family to head towards the turn at the end of the hall. Then she would catch up to them.

_ “Are you alright?” _ Asked a soft, sibilant voice to Harinder’s immediate left, and she flinched hard. She had thought she was next to a wall, but in her willful blindness had not realized it was instead the large, glass-fronted exhibit of a cobra. The cobra was up near the glass, his head raised to near Harinder’s level, and he looked at her steadily in a way Harinder did not know snakes to be capable of.

She didn’t respond, because there was no way snakes could talk, but the cobra seemed to know she had heard him, most probably because she had turned and made sustained eye contact.

_ “Child?”  _ He asked again, and that time Harinder was certain she heard the faint hissing that belaid the words. She glanced around, but could see nothing that might make such a hissing noise… except the snake.

_ “Can you talk?” _ Harinder asked, turning towards the snake and bracing both of her hands on the rail. She was leaning in quite close to the glass and to the outside observer one might assume she was charming the snake, but at that moment she did not care.

_ “I cannot,”  _ the snake said, looking her in the eye.  _ “But you can.” _

_ Wow, _ Harinder thought caustically.  _ Helpful. _

_ “But did you speak to me?” _

The snake took a moment in which he seemed to be ruefully reassessing his phrasing before he said,  _ “Yes. You seemed unwell. Are you alright?” _

Harinder stared at the snake, jaw locked shut. In the past, that question had always been a very dangerous trap. But this was a snake in the zoo, not a teacher at school. No one would believe a snake if he said she was abused. 

_ “I just don’t like cages,”  _ She settled on finally.

_ “Ah.” _ He didn’t nod, but gave off the impression of sage agreement.  _ “Nor do we all.” _

She stared a moment more, trying to imagine some way in which she could help that did not involve jailbreaking a large, deadly reptile, but the cobra beat her to it.

_ “There is nothing you can do, little one. We are resigned to our lives here, and at least well fed. I thank you for your compassion, though.” _

_ “Doesn’t seem like enough,”  _ Harinder muttered, briefly glancing down the hall to check on her relatives who had yet to turn the corner.

_ “Perhaps not,” _ Agreed the snake.  _ “But it is nice to see a face like my home. The humans here are white like clouds. I had missed the brown faces.” _

Harinder had never really thought about the fact that she was different from her family, despite knowing her father had not been white. Certainly it had never been a celebrated part of her existence. Somehow, it was both horribly painful and deeply heartwarming that the color of her face gave this trapped cobra comfort.

_ “Thanks,” _ She said quietly.

_ “Thank  _ **_you.”_ ** Snake eyes cannot twinkle, but Harinder thought that if this snake was a man perhaps they would have.

Another glance revealed her aunt and uncle turning the corner, so Harinder hurriedly bid her goodbyes to the gentle snake. It felt like leaving a friend, a tether pulling her to him even as she turned and hurried down the hall after her family, but Harinder refused to look back as she turned the corner. She had never allowed herself to look back when she left things-- this wasn’t a movie. Looking back only ever made it hurt more.


	3. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hari turns eleven

The days after Dudley’s birthday weren’t of particular note. The skeleton did not reappear in any of Harinder’s dreams and she got the impression that it was somehow ashamed to have been in the situation at all. At the library, under the pretense of school research, Harinder managed to find a paper from 1981 which had an article on the blue sun during sunrise and sunset, caused by a large amount of house fires caused by terrorists. Unfortunately, because the phenomena had been so widespread Harinder could find no hint of where in England she might have been in the dream, but it was interesting to know that the blue sun detail had been factual. 

Eventually school ended, and with it Harinder’s season of being well fed. It was much harder to scavenge food from the trash bins at home, so during the summer was what Harinder considered ‘lean season.’ This was especially unfortunate because the summer was also when Harinder was expected to do the most work; her aunt told her that because of her dark skin, the sun would not damage her if she worked in the garden for a long time. Considering the amount of painful sunburns Harinder had gotten in her lifetime, she was fairly sure this was false, but aunt Petunia was not a woman who listened to logic.

With summer also came Harinder’s birthday. To be honest, this was not an event Harinder paid a large amount of attention to. After all, she rarely knew what day it was and her family would never remind her of her birthday. She hadn’t even known when her birthday _was_ until she was six, and her aunt had told her to prevent teachers from being concerned that she did not know. She had tried to celebrate exactly once that same year, carefully drawing out pretty invitations to her seventh birthday party and giving them to all her classmates, but when the day went by with no mention of the event and not a single one of Harinder’s peers showing up for the party, Harinder decided it wasn’t worth the fuss and had not celebrated since.

Unfortunately, this year was a little different. It would be Harinder’s eleventh birthday, after all, and the girls at school said that eleven was very important because it was the first of the pre-teen years. Ten was a double digit, but it could not in any way be considered pre-teen. But eleven? That was close. It was only two away from thirteen, which was _full_ teen. Eleven was when girls started to not be girls anymore, her classmates said excitedly. Harinder knew they meant puberty and womanhood when they said this, but as a distinct non-fan of female puberty Harinder rather clung to the idea of growing up to not be a girl. 

So, although Harinder did not especially care for the milestones that eleven brought, she hoped nonetheless that it _would_ be an important birthday. Perhaps boys were not in her future, nor periods or bras, but _something_ had to be. Maybe the world would be kind and on her eleventh birthday she would find out what exactly she would become. 

With this hope in mind, Harinder made herself a little calendar of July. Her birthday was on the very last day, which in her opinion was the easiest day of the month to miss. It could just slip by unless she was careful, so every day she made sure to mark off a day on her calendar, which she kept hidden under her cot in her cupboard. It was moderately tedious, as Harinder had absolutely nothing else marked on her calendar to help break up the month into smaller chunks, but she persevered. Eleven would be special, she spoke in her mind as if trying to will it into reality. Eleven would be special. All she had to do was mark the days so that she didn’t miss it. 

In this manner Harinder staunchly powered through the month of July, enduring the extra work and the sunburns and the weekly reminder of her sin. Her gaze was set so unwaveringly on the last day of the month that by the thirtieth Harinder almost could not believe that her birthday was the next day. Truly, not even the next day-- her birthday was at midnight, in mere hours. The thirtieth became a blur of hot summer sun and chores, Harinder’s mind too occupied by anticipation and hope to focus on her usual drudgery. Eager to participate in at least some of the birthday ritual, in case it was important, she even stole a muffin and a single, mostly-burnt-down birthday candle from the kitchen. That night, in her cupboard, Harinder stuck the candle into the top of the muffin and pulled an old lighter she had stolen from her uncle some time ago from behind a broken board. She sat there, staring at the muffin with lighter poised until the clock in the hall began to chime twelve.

_BONG. BONG. BONG. BONG. GONG._

She flicked the lighter on, holding the flame to the short black wick of the birthday candle as the sixth chime sounded.

_BONG. BONG._

The flame took, standing nearly as tall as the stubby candle itself, casting her cupboard in an unearthly orange glow. 

_BONG. BONG._

She lowered her eyelids and unfocused her vision. _Happy birthday, me,_ She thought, forcing all her hope and anticipation and dreams into the words.

_BONG. BONG._

With the twelfth chime, she blew out the candle.

Her cupboard spiraled into blackness, the smoke rising from the candle in a silver wisp which caught it’s edges on the blue moonlight which fell in between the slats on her cupboard door. Harinder sat stock still, waiting for something to happen. It felt like someone should have responded to her wish. It felt like-- although she shied away from the word-- it felt like something magical was supposed to happen.

She waited there in the dark for another hour, until the clock struck one. Disappointment had begun clawing its way up the inside of her chest, and she struggled to push it aside. Magic wasn’t real, after all, and there was no one in the world to answer her wish. It was silly of her to hope for some magical revelation on her eleventh birthday, that wasn’t how life worked. She told herself this firmly, and rubbed hard at her eyes as she laid down on her cot. There was no reason to cry-- she shouldn’t have expected anything.

When she opened her eyes again, she knew that she was dreaming.

She stood in a nebulous area, the edges lost to mist and fog. The center seemed to be made of warm golden sandstone, and the air smelled of plants and flowers. Across from her, standing before a sandstone wall with something clutched in its skeletal hands, was the giant black-cloaked being Harinder had seen in her dream before. It stepped towards her cautiously, as if it expected her to run away, a sad slant to its boney shoulders.

Harinder watched it approach until it stood right in front of her, towering far above her head. Between its hands was what looked like a bundle of pale blue fabric, which shifted in the low lighting the way the flame on a gas stove does. The skeleton opened its hands slightly, offering the fabric to her.

“What is it?” She asked, looking up at its face.

Although there was no flesh on the skull to form an expression, Harinder got the impression of a smile. Slowly, as if asking her permission, the skeleton unfurled the fabric in its hands to reveal it was cut like a slightly large handkerchief. Its skeletal fingers pinched two corners and slowly, slowly, lifted the cloth to drape it over Harinder’s head. It fell like gauze, transparent and soft, tinting her surroundings pale blue and causing light to dapple across the world like she was standing underwater. Harinder looked into the skeleton’s face and saw the blue shadows ripple to form a small, wry smile.

She wanted to ask again what it was, but decided that was probably impolite so instead she said, “Thank you.”

The skeleton bowed its head, and then began to step away.

“Wait!” Harinder cried reflexively, and then realized when the skeleton paused that she had no idea what to say. “I-it’s my birthday,” She settled on lamely.

Again, the blue light shifted to form a little quirk of a smile on the skeleton’s face. “I know,” It said softly.

Harinder bounced on her toes. She didn’t want it to leave. There had to be something else to say. “I looked up the blue sun,” She settled on. “It was in 1981. Where were we?”

The blue shadows formed an expression of instant regret, sadness weighing down the skeleton’s shadowy mouth. “Not today, Harinder. I will show you later.”

“You will?” She asked, tripping forward in her eagerness. “Promise?”

It smiled a little, sadly. “Of course. Go enjoy your birthday, child.”

Harinder didn’t want to tell it that she would not be enjoying her birthday the way normal children did, the way Dudley did. The skeleton seemed so sad, as if it was mourning for something Harinder didn’t know she had lost. She decided that, just because this skeleton was nice to her, she would do her best to have a good day today. She would remember that it had come to give her a gift, and not worry too much about anything else.

“I will,” Harinder said, putting the force of her resolve behind the words.

It smiled. “Good.”

The rest of her dreams seemed lost in a muddle of grey fog, but when Harinder awoke on the thirty-first of July and opened her eyes, the world was still tinted blue. She looked up at the undersides of the stairs for a moment, watching the blue dapples swim and shift and wondering what they were, before she sat up and stretched slowly.

Someone had come to celebrate her birthday after all, then. She tried to suppress the smile that was threatening her face. It was the first birthday present she could remember getting-- if nothing else, this made her eleventh birthday special. She took the time before her aunt awoke and let her out to carefully modulate her expression into something more neutral. The blue dapples helped with this-- they were calming to watch, and after a while Harinder found herself startled by her aunt unlocking her cupboard. She hadn’t even noticed the time passing.

While her aunt chose the ingredients for breakfast, Harinder went to check the front door for mail. Sunday was the only day that didn’t have mail, so it was usually worthwhile to check. A small stack of envelopes sat on the doormat and Harinder picked them up, shuffling them curiously. She liked seeing the bright colors of her aunt’s magazines, and reading the strange business names on her uncle’s mail. However, this time there was a thick envelope of yellowed paper, addressed in handsome green ink. 

_Harinder J. Potter_ , it read. _Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey._ Then, below that in a spiky gothic hand, glowing bright blue, _HIDE THIS._

It took all of one second for Harinder to process the blue text and tuck the thick letter into the waistband of her trousers, under her shirt. She had no idea who the letter itself might be from, but she knew exactly who had written the blue warning. It was from the skeleton in her dreams, who seemed to know things Harinder did not but that were indubitably real. If it said she should hide the letter addressed to her, she would do it. It harmed no one.

She spent the morning with the letter hidden on her person. It was a dangerous thing to do, because the Dursleys had strip-searched her before, but they would only do that if Harinder raised their suspicion. The envelope was thick and sturdy, minimizing the crinkliness as Harinder moved, so that she was able to make it through breakfast and duck into her cupboard before chores to hide the letter under the guise of grabbing her shoes. She knew it would distract her all day-- after all, she didn’t think really _anyone_ knew she existed. How on earth would they know her living situation, and why would they want to send a letter to her? None of it made any sense. So she put on her shoes and tramped out to the garden to weed the roses expecting to be fully occupied by the letter, and was completely blindsided when she saw the blue shadows positively dripping from the plants outdoors. She almost tripped as she forced herself not to stop walking, and approached the rose beds cautiously, kneeling in front of them. The blue shadows on the plants were all watching her-- on the roses especially, as she was closest to them and they were quite large plants. She had no idea what to do except say hi and state her business.

“Um, hi,” She said cautiously, keeping her voice as quiet as possible so her aunt wouldn't hear her. “I’m here to weed your beds, if that’s okay?”

There was a beat when the blue shadows seemed to consider, and then as one they swayed up and away from Harinder, angling towards the sun instead. Harinder let out a shaky breath and began to pull weeds. For some reason, she had never expected the blue shadows to cling to plants. On the skeleton it made sense-- skeletons usually had flesh, and usually used that flesh to express opinions. But rose bushes were wood. They didn’t move on their own like people, they didn’t have faces. _What am I seeing?_ Harinder wondered, not for the first time. This was going to take a while to get used to.

Weeding the garden was unusually terrifying when Harinder knew all the plants were watching her. She completed the task with uncommon speed and tried not to show how jittery she was as she returned to the indoors to help prepare lunch. She nearly dropped a plate only once, so hopefully her aunt wouldn’t notice how hard her hands were shaking. And anyways, it’s not like shaking hands were _unusual_ for Harinder. It would be fine. Everything was fine. She spent the meal trying not to stare out of the window at all the bright blue shapes-- bodiless blue cats sunning on the sidewalk, blue sparrows in the trees, blue flowers blooming in the middle of all-grass lawns. Quietly, Harinder dreaded the moment when she saw a bodiless blue _person_ , because that would confirm what she suspected she was seeing; spirits.

The rest of her chores were indoors for the day, so Harinder avoided the windows and did her work in silence. She was probably working faster than she usually did, but she couldn’t help the adrenaline. She just wanted to get back to her cupboard in peace, and finally read that damned letter. Maybe _that_ would be something normal for a change. Dinner was hard to survive, because Harinder had been keyed up all day and was really beginning to feel as if she needed to lie down. She snuck food out of habit, but although her stomach growled she felt nauseous at the idea of eating. God, maybe she wouldn’t read the letter. Maybe she would just go straight to sleep.

She almost did, too, but that green ink stared at her as she sat in her cupboard that night. It was getting to the point where she was always up too late, she thought, staring at the letter. The blue veil over her vision made the dark seem lighter than it was-- she would be able to read the letter. If she opened it.

 _I should open it,_ she thought, staring at her name on the back. _It could be important._

She broke the wax seal on the front in quiet trepidation, pulling out the thick, folded sheets of paper. One appeared to be a list of items, like for school, but everything on the list sounded made up. She opened the other piece of paper and read it slowly.

It was for a school called Hogwarts, headed by a man who had titles Harinder didn’t think were real. It informed her that she had been accepted at the school and that term started September the first. It was signed by the deputy headmistress. Harinder stared at that letter for a long time, then looked at the item list again, then looked at the envelope and back to the letter. _What?_ None of it made sense! School for witchcraft and wizardry? Cauldrons? ‘ _Supreme mugwump?_ ’ Harinder just couldn’t process any of it. It almost seemed like a prank letter, but she didn’t have any friends to play such a good-natured prank on her. What in the hell was going on?

She paused for a moment, looking up at the back of her cupboard door where the blue shadows danced and rippled. Well, there was one person she could ask, for sure. The giant skeleton who had given her spirit sight would probably know about things like magical school and cauldrons, right? She stared down at the papers for another moment before stuffing them behind a loose board and lying down forcefully on her cot. The skeleton had better be up for a return appearance, she thought. She’d run all over the dreamworld looking for it until it showed up.


End file.
